Defiant Joe Biden rebuffs Democratic critics over Afghanistan troop withdrawal (original) (raw)

President Biden defended his chaotic troop withdrawal and insisted that Britain and its allies “had a choice” to stay in Afghanistan without US support.

He said that Nato had agreed on the pullout and that nobody foresaw the speed of the government collapse that has stranded up to 15,000 Americans and tens of thousands of their local allies in what some Republicans are calling a huge hostage situation.

Biden conceded that al-Qaeda could soon return to Afghanistan as a result of the withdrawal but said that this could be confronted by “over-the- horizon” forces such as drones.

He was speaking to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News in response to widespread criticism for failing to take any media questions since the fall of Kabul at the weekend. “Before I made this decision I met with all our allies, our Nato allies in Europe. They agreed. We should be getting out,” Biden said.

Asked whether those allies had a choice, he said: “Sure, they had a choice. Look, the one thing I promise you — in private, Nato allies are not quiet.”

His comments came as The Wall Street Journal reported that two dozen State Department officials at the embassy in Kabul sent an internal “dissent memo” to Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, last month warning of the potential rapid collapse of the city.

The July 13 cable warned of swift territorial gains by the Taliban and the collapse of security forces and offered recommendations on speeding up an evacuation. It is the clearest evidence yet that the Biden administration was warned by its officials that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it.

One of the strongest criticisms from Biden’s own party has been over the damage to the rights of Afghan women and girls from Taliban rule. “The idea that we’re able to deal with the rights of women around the world by military force is not rational,” Biden, 78, said in the interview with ABC News.

“Look what’s happened to the Uighurs in western China . . . and in other parts of the world. There are a lot of places where women are being subjugated. The way to deal with that is putting economic, diplomatic and national international pressure on them to change their behaviour.”

Biden said that US troops could stay beyond his deadline for departure of August 31 if some Americans were still to be evacuated. He also denied that he had failed to plan properly for the withdrawal. Donald Trump has claimed that he would have ensured that all US citizens were brought out before he removed troops. Biden has ordered up to 6,000 troops back to Kabul airport.

When Stephanopoulos referred to reports that military advisers had urged Biden to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to shore up the government, he at first said: “No, they didn’t. It was split. That wasn’t true.”

Biden said that the Taliban were co-operating up to a point. “What are they doing now? They’re co-operating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera, but we’re having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there.”

He rejected criticism that the US had shown it was no longer a reliable ally. “We have kept every commitment. We made a sacred commitment to article five [of the Nato treaty] that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan.”

Biden added: “I had a simple choice. If I said, ‘We’re gonna stay,’ then we’d better be prepared to put a whole hell of a lot more troops in.”